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Mike Genevie was the kind of guy who always came ready with a joke. But when his relationship with his girlfriend went sour, his sunny outlook on life turned overcast. "She stopped returning my calls," says the 27-year-old auditor from Levittown, Pennsylvania. "I found out that she was with someone else." Suddenly, when a commercial for an antidepressant appeared on television, he found himself reaching for a pen and pad instead of the remote control.

Genevie has plenty of company. A 2005 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people take antidepressants even more often than they pop pills for high blood pressure, asthma, and high cholesterol. But men often don't need to be medicated—they're just feeling down at the moment.

"Antidepressants are prescribed too often," says Stuart Shipko, M.D., a psychiatrist and the author of Surviving Panic Disorder. Dr. Shipko cautions that taking a pill can lead to real problems: addiction, sexual impairment, or both. "Unless a person has a serious mental-health problem, the risk-benefit ratio doesn't favor these drugs," he says.

Fortunately, there are plenty of DIY ways to boost your body's own feel-good forces. Try a combination of the following blues-busting strategies, and your life view can brighten up in no time.